


Betwixt Memory and Reality

by TongueTiedandSqueamish



Category: 18th & 19th Century CE RPF, Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: "I'm so confused but I love every word of it.", Also fusions of the OBC and the real historical figures, LMM-Hamilton, Lafayette-Jefferson-Diggs, M/M, Multiple versions of the same character, Odom-Burr, Post-Duel, Reality Bending, The most common sentiment expressed for this fic thus far is:, it's a mess, kind of, such as
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-25 06:36:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6184486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TongueTiedandSqueamish/pseuds/TongueTiedandSqueamish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the duel, reality fractured around Aaron Burr, and he struggled to make sense of this new, shattered perspective he'd been given. Alexander led him through it — Burr wished he knew which one.<br/> </p><p>  <em>“I think you . . .” Alexander bit back a sudden gasp of pain. “. . . cracked a rib.” Blood dripped off his nose like rainwater and it twisted Burr’s stomach.</em></p><p>  <em>“But how?” Aaron clutched at Alexander’s arm. “You’re not real, you’re not . . .”</em></p><p>  <em>Face twice as pale against pain and blood, Alexander smiled as an elder does to a naïve child who could not possibly know better. Burr’s grip turned hard and bruising. “You’re <strong>not</strong>,” Burr hissed.</em></p><p>  <em>“Aaron,” Alexander said as if he had not spoken. “It hurts to breathe. Can you help me?”</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fractures

The day after Alexander Hamilton’s death, Burr stood a few too many seconds looking at himself in the mirror after his morning shave. The shadows under his eyes could not be written off as the morning gloom, nor could the drawn expression be blamed by exhaustion alone. He looked at himself, too passive and too painful to be called staring or scrutinizing, and fastidiously stitched together a dry but pleasant half-smile and hammered a flat but good-natured gleam into his eyes, like nailing a pliable human mask over the acidic grief-regret-pain-loathing that threatened to overwhelm him.

In the mirror, his reflection tilted its head so his face was thrown into deep shadow, his eyes pits of nothing, and his lips quirked up on one side, a subtle, challenging, arrogant _smirk_ —Burr started so badly he cut his arm with the razor still clutched in his hand, and he rushed out of the room. He did not call a doctor, though the wound bordered on needing stitches; a tight, fearful irrationality whispered, _What if the doctor knows what you’ve done?_ With empty eyes and a smirk knocking around his chest and making it difficult to breathe, he could not dismiss the ridiculous possibility.

The wound did not become infected; he lived. He always did.

~~~~~

South Carolina was unbearably hot in July, but Burr could forgive it as long as he sat with his daughter at his side and his grandson in his arms. Aaron Burr Alston was a year old, placid but sharp-eyed, like his mother and grandfather before him. Burr tried to remember 1785 when Theo was this small, with the same look, but the heat and hellish stress of the last weeks drained away his memories. Only this moment was real and true, this pure youth that would bloom into brilliance with age that laid quiet, observant, unknowing but attentive, thinking without judgement.

Tears welled in his eyes and Burr hastily wiped them away. Theo turned a page in her ancient French tome and pretended not to notice. “Was the duel as satisfactory as you hoped, Father?” she asked.

Aaron did not reply. Her words faded, almost as if they had never been spoken.

They sat outside on the porch where the sun couldn’t reach them but the breeze could. Trees that lined the path up to the house swayed in the gentle wind, and on a quiet Sunday afternoon of no work, not a soul stirred to interrupt the silence. The open space soothed where the cluttered streets of New York panicked; here, time slowed to frozen instead of winding so tightly it split into haywire ends. Dappled sunshine shifted down through the tree branches. Birds sang softly, distantly. The pages of Theo’s book rustled as she turned them with her usual astonishing speed. Burr saw a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye, perhaps a squirrel, and lazily followed it.

Sitting in a chair nudged into the corner of the porch was a man very much like himself. Burr blinked once, twice, so calm for a moment that he did not register the sight. Himself. One ankle resting on the opposite knee, posture loose and comfortable, leaned back. His head was tilted at an angle to set his face into shadow, and when Aaron’s gaze locked with his doppelganger’s, the latter chuckled in perfectly crafted condescension.

Then he vanished, and Burr’s vision swirled in dizziness and nausea, like he was twenty-two in Monmouth all over again, quivering and delirious from heat stroke, like he was a child wrapped in a numbing blanket, tripping over himself to keep up, trying to listen to orders that felt miles away, like a fairytale he couldn’t quite suspend his reality enough to believe.

“Father!” Theo shouted in alarm as Burr swayed. She swept her son out of his arms and then helped him lay down. Her fingers swept away the hair plastered on his forehead. “Father, what happened? Are you all right?”

He shook his head. She pressed. He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Is this about Hamilton?” she whispered, not quite believing she was suggesting such superstition.

He tried to laugh but he was so disconnected from himself he wasn’t sure which sensation fluttering in his chest meant what. “My dear Theodosia, if only it was. If only it wasn’t me. I’m the cause of it all.” She seemed to understand him less than he understood himself. Aaron Burr Alston stared at the chair in the corner and did not bother with his mother or grandfather’s words at all.

~~~~~

It happened again. Burr woke in the middle of the night and saw himself writing at the desk. His pen wrote in short, vicious strokes but his expression remained more blank than a stone slab. He stayed for several minutes until with a flourish he signed the letter “A. Burr.” Aaron could recognize the familiar gesture even from outside himself. When he vanished, Aaron squeezed his eyes shut and refused to check the desk for a new letter. (In the morning, he found nothing.)

And again. At dinner, Burr, Theo, and Theo’s Joseph sat around a small, private dining table of six seats. Burr listened to Theo and Joseph debate the psychological consequences of hard labor with a faint smile, until three figures occupied the three empty seats between one heartbeat and the next. The copy of himself and his dear, sweet, marvelous Theodosia leaned close to whisper what could only be conspiracies at that tone, while the usually proud and cheerful Joseph stared into his plate with a practiced, weary silence. After several minutes, he clasped his hand with Theo’s and smiled straight into his own eyes. “The world waits for our ascendancy, Theo,” his copy said to himself, brimming with confidence, and all three disappeared. Theo and Joseph continued to debate and hardly noticed Aaron’s departure from the table with a quick kiss to Theo’s brow.

And again. Burr walked to the closest town, waving off Theo’s stern warnings and offers of a carriage with assurances he would be fine and that the fresh air and exercise would do him well. He ordered a drink in a tavern and sat in the corner to cool off, and when the world fractured into copies, doubled motions, shadows, himself sitting in the opposite corner, Burr shut his eyes and pressed his forehead to the table.

That afternoon, he booked a ship back up North, murder charges be damned, and apologized to Theo fervently for staying for such a short amount of time. She shook her head. “I would rather you be far away and in good health, where you can write to me, than close and ailing, where you look so constantly distant and unreachable. Don’t worry, Father, Aaron and I will visit you soon.” The next morning, they embraced, and he made his way to his ship post-haste.

~~~~~

“You poor man.”

Burr whirled around in an inelegant fumble, almost knocking an inkwell off the desk. A foreign man sat on his cot, legs crossed at the knee, smiling with genuine verve. Before he opened his mouth and spoke again, Burr knew he would be an enigmatic trouble, for he looked unlike any man Burr had ever seen before. His skin was pale but several shades too dark to claim pure European descent, and the structure of his face bewildered any attempt to label nationality or race. The man raised his hands, palms out, and laughed. “Hey, it’s all right, I’m not here to fight or cause you a fright. Hear what I have to say before you turn me away.” There was a lilt to his voice that implied he had meant to rhyme, as if reading a casual poetic prophecy.

“Who are you?” Burr gritted out, tense all the way down to his bones.

The man’s smile brightened with amusement. “Funnily enough, it depends who you ask. At my point in history, it’s a moot task. Finally, so many years have passed it’s old hat to act as if you know more about facts than your neighbor next door. But this is the past, so I suppose I’ll play it on the nose.” He stuck out his hand. “Aaron Burr, sir. I’m Alexander Hamilton. I’m at your service, sir.”

“Stop rhyming and stop lying,” Burr replied, as if the words startled out of him without filter.

“Sorry. Rhyming’s a compulsion.” His voice continued to lilt but lacked the alike sounds that tied them together. “And I’m not lying, I swear. My name is Alexander Hamilton. I was born in Nevis. My father was named James Hamilton and he split, full of it, debt-ridden, when I was ten, and two years later my mother and I, bed-ridden, were sick, the scent thick – I got better but my mother went quick.”

“Stop.”

“Sorry, like I said, compulsion. I went to King’s College, they call it Columbia now. When I got to America, I felt lost in a crowd but somehow I was still so proud, confident enough to question your actions a minute after meeting you. C’mon, Burr, I know I must not look how you remember, but it’s been centuries. Surely that’s time enough for change?”

Burr pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes against the rising panic bitter in the back of his throat. “What’s happening to me?” he whispered. The man spoke again. Aaron tried to stop him with feeble words, tired insistences, but the pretend-Alexander who looked like a new and unique type of person forged on. “Aaron Burr, sir, it’s not as bad as it seems. The world isn’t falling around you or fraying at the seams – sorry, I’m sorry. I’m not the Alexander Hamilton you shot. Most people say you didn’t shoot me at all; most say it was staged, just a game, a show. That’s how it is. You’ve been seeing another Aaron Burr, haven’t you?” Aaron shook his head violently. The ship shifted underneath him and he felt like he was upside-down, staring at the ceiling even with his hands tight over his eyes. “Shh, it’s all right. I thought it would be better if I came to see you, but maybe—”

“Leave.” A breath of a whisper with no substance, a pathetic thing.

Silence.

Aaron Burr (son of Aaron Burr (son of Elizabeth and Daniel Burr) and Esther Edwards (daughter of Sarah and Jonathan Edwards)) did not move. He barely breathed.

When he lowered his hands, Alexander Hamilton – the _real_ one – sat where the previous fake had, slumped, tired, and silent. They stared at each other, and then Burr turned around to continue to write his letter to Theo about how his travels were fine, his spirits high, and his illness retreating.

~~~~~

They didn’t speak.

Burr continued seeing the shadowed version of himself pacing and chuckling and writing short, vicious letters, but Alexander said nothing. He hunched in the corner and stared through the walls, far, far away. Sometimes, Burr thought he heard that horrid fake whisper a faint song in his ear: _In the eye of a hurricane there is quiet, for just a moment. A yellow sky . . ._

~~~~~

He heard it so often in the next week, even after the ship, in his temporary office in Philadelphia, with Alexander hunched in another corner, that he sang his own whisper refrain. “Where I go ev’rybody dies. I live and the world goes by, leaving me behind, always leaving me behind. I can’t seem to die . . .”

He glanced to the corner. Alexander’s eyes were closed, and he shook, fine tremors like battle adrenaline, like he was a hairsbreadth away from being snapped up by Death’s jaws.

Burr whispered it again. In the unbroken confidence of the room, Burr could finally feel the power of truth. Scooped out and laid bare in front of the enemy that would have torn him to pieces two months ago, it was – safe.

Burr’s copy appeared beside his desk, pacing, and stopped to glare Burr down and sneer, “Sentimental fool.” Burr closed his eyes and waited for him to leave.


	2. Rewind

Despite hosting countless founding moments of the United States – a place where Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence and James Madison the Constitution, surrounded by the most brilliant minds in the colonies; where Benjamin Franklin giddily toiled through his science, newspapers, and inventions; where Betsy Ross stitched together the flag that united Americans under one banner – Burr found Philadelphia to be lackluster. Philadelphia was a city of dry political ideology, of closed doors in stuffy rooms filled with airy words and weighty quills, whereas Boston and New York City were grimy, packed, busy cities of action. Those were the breeding grounds of reckless hope and greedy opportunism, where a rich man must be doubly watchful of his purse while skirting the obnoxious din of the marketplace and politicians must affect the dignity of the judiciary, for every word he speaks is held under twice the scrutiny. On the streets of Philadelphia, the most ambitious men were two-bit rag peddlers like James T. Callender, whose most revolutionary thought was to blackmail big name politicians like Hamilton and Jefferson with sex scandals. The best part of Philadelphia was its geographic position between the District of Columbia and New York City. A city of the in-between and never the destination.

Burr hid in his Philadelphian office and waited in the uninspiring port, its breath forever baited for a glory it never quite achieved, no matter its superficial accolades. Burr waited and wrote letters and held forcefully cordial meetings to keep up appearances.

Matthew Lawler, the mayor of the city, visited most often, encouraged by Burr’s unwavering hospitality and attracted by the scandal surrounding him. A blathering idiot with an observant eye whose mind could infer nothing from his observations, he lounged and jabbered in Burr’s office or insisted Burr come to his or his family’s speck of an estate, which Burr often agreed to, if only so Lawler could spill tea on his own upholstery rather than Burr’s.

Today, they spoke in Burr’s office, as he had received an incredibly beautiful and ornate letter from Thomas Jefferson, whose words sprawled with increasing elegance in accordance with his increasing vitriol for his subject. His philosophical treatises were impeccable, but his nasty condemnations were breathtaking. After reading the letter, Burr’s skin crawled with the undivided weight of Jefferson’s ire. They had never liked one another, and the election of 1800 had strained their professional relationship, but Hamilton’s death (he keeps his eyes forward – _don’t look_ ) broke the last frayed strings of their tolerance. Living under the crushing animosity of one of the most influential men in America made Burr feel smaller than a pesky mouse, a boot hovering just overhead. His life’s work, every bit of it, a published letter away from obliteration . . .

No, Burr did not want to expose himself to the public eye today, at least not before he replied and stowed the letter away in the locked chest in his quarters. But the mayor was insistent on his companionship, so Burr smiled, invited him in, and forced himself not to grit his teeth or tense his shoulders in irritation.

“Mr. Vice President, you know I don’t indulge in rumors – goodness knows as a politician you learn they’re all worthless bilgewater – but you should hear the elephantine ones they attribute to you nowadays! They say that George Washington himself, may God rest his soul, called you a traitorous snake when you were his aide-de-camp, or that you alone were the cause for the original splitting of the political parties – some nonsense about rigged polls, I believe? Some say that on your trek up to Quebec you became Benedict Arnold’s protégé and you’ve been waiting all this time to kill the President and take the country as your own! Can you believe that? All because a little duel led to a bloody end . . .”

Before he could stop himself, Burr glanced to the corner, directing his gaze back so quickly he saw nothing but the impression of a slumped figure. (Which did not imply a figure was _there_ , but that a shadow or an arrangement of objects produced a figurelike silhouette. Nothing more.)

Lawler laughed his low, self-conscious laugh and twisted to glance behind him. “Why, Mr. Vice President, are you afraid someone will hear us? Do some of those rumors hold truth?”

“Of course not. Movement caught my eye is all. There must be a draft I was unaware of.” Burr feigned nonchalance with the mastery of forty-eight years of practice, and Lawler, oblivious to his tells, nattered on. At some point, two shadows stood at the doorway, a trick of the setting sun, and voices carried idle talk of grandchildren ( _i have one, a son. — a son! ah that’s wonderful mr. vice president!_ ) that must have came from the widow’s next door. Burr bid the mayor good night, citing a need to respond to Jefferson, and the man’s good-natured countenance fell into seriousness. “Be vigilant, Mr. Burr. The dullards running New York and New Jersey have turned their backs to honor, and I fear this duel will haunt you—” (the corner is empty, he swears, _empty_ ) “—in your political pursuits. It shocks me that with the Revolution so recent, which was itself a duel between nations, they have labeled this ‘murder.’ Destruction of the mind is a far worse fate than the destruction of the body . . . Be vigilant, Mr. Burr,” he repeated. “Good luck to you.”

The door shut behind him. Burr pressed his back against it. He almost took a step away and then he heard it, that damn whisper: _In the eye of a hurricane_ . . . He slapped his hands over his ears but it did not deflect the sound; it came straight from the inside of his skull. _. . . there is quiet . . ._ There is quiet, there is nothing, this is a _dream_. _. . . for just a moment . . ._ Burr allowed the world to drag him down like a weight atop his head until he sank to the floor, head between his knees, his cravat tight around his neck. _. . . a yellow sky . . ._

He sucked in a breath, ignoring how it rattled around his chest like he was hollow, pushed himself to his feet, and walked himself to his desk. No one else would reply to Jefferson for him.

~~~~~

Two figures appeared in front of Burr’s desk, and he closed his eyes.

“Have you seen two more disgraceful versions than these? Alexander, look—”

“Oh yes, they’re pathetic, hollow men would cry upon seeing these tragic heroes, yes yes. Burr, I have a million things better to do than watch myself reel in shock and watch yourself act like a child who can’t swallow hard truths.” The next it spoke so close that Burr almost flinched. “You’re not fooling anyone, especially not yourself.”

A satisfied chuckle. “See? There’s the sadistic pleasure I knew you would glean from them.”

“I’ve seen enough pathetic to last millennia.” One set of laughter ceased, and another began. “Have you told Odom about the broken loop yet?”

“No. Miranda said he was handling it.”

“No wonder they’re in denial.”

Harsh, cruel laughs, and then silence.

Burr opened his eyes and began working again.

~~~~~

Philadelphia dimmed for two days and glowed for two nights under the soft assault of rain. Burr lit a candle in the morning that burned throughout the day, as the weak sunlight illuminated the vaguest of shapes, none of which helped him work. With the rain came a dizzying humidity that left him sweating through his clothes within an hour and half-drowned within two. Any productive activity petered off into discomfort, ink bleeding under his hands when he wrote or letters smudging when he read. He begged off his visiting queue of politicians with the citing of a fever. In the morning, he rose, lit the candle, sharpened his quills, laid out the parchment, and then he would check the window, and the taps of the rain on the glass would distract him, the shushing of the falling water would entrance him.

Shapes passed by, indistinct but not shadows. Past his window, they would trace their paths along routes unrecognizable under the strings of rain, knowing their ways by touch and foreknowledge, what the common man called memory and what Plato called the immortal soul. Burr tapped the glass in response to the rain, unable to match its stochastic beat.

He wrote,

 

_Dear Theodosia,_

_I love you_.

 

Lacking the vigor needed for lies, he looped those words over and over. _Dear Theodosia, I love you. Dear Theo, I love you. Dearest, Theo, I love you._ When the world frayed, his love for his daughter remained immutable. What else was there to say? _I love you, Theo. I wish I could love you so much the world would listen_.

Without niceties to affect or effort to bury himself under, the two days passed in a tranquil, recuperative atmosphere. The space between seconds stretched to fill minutes as the day became the same as the night in the vulnerable, washed-out light of the office. He read the letter from Thomas Jefferson again and laughed, a mere huff of breath so as not to disturb the peace. Then, realizing no one would disturb him, he stripped off his jacket, waistcoat, and cravat, and undid a few buttons on his shirt for good measure. It didn’t help much, the air so thick he felt underwater, but at least there was only one uncomfortably damp layer sticking to him now. He hummed and tapped out a beat on the glass, wondering about those people outside he couldn’t see the faces of. Who was going to the bakery a block down? Who was visiting the widow next door? Who was stressed? Who was laughing? Who was married? Who was educated? Was there a woman out there with dark hair, smooth poise, and a smile that feigned dullness but hid an “unwomanly” intelligence? Was there a woman pretending to wait for her husband to arrive home but secretly praying he would pass away? If life had spiraled so unfathomably that the strange and the dead taunted his flawed mortal eyes – if he saw _that_ man, why not _her_?

He turned his back on the window.

A paper sat on the desk that had not been there before. It read, _What are we?_

He blinked. Another scrap appeared, next to the first, written with the same hasty, cramped scrawl. _Is God a lie?_

_Is this purgatory?_

_What are they?_

_Is life many steps and that was the first one?_

_Reincarnation?_

_Can you see it, too?_

_The layers and layers and layers ahead of you?_

_Why can’t I see the end?_

_What is the difference between you and I?_

_Aaron, it’s been eight days, not two._

Aaron’s heart seized, and his mouth shot off, “No, it’s two.”

The man in the corner gave him a smile that was torn at the edges. Burr had never seen it because in all his living days, Hamilton had tucked away the pieces of himself stained with sickness and flaunted the flawless silk. He could see the orphan child from Nevis in that smile, and the countless nights spent pacing, scribbling, screaming, ‘ _That’s not who I am!_ ’ into the paper with every tortuously long treatise. “Aaron,” Alexander said. Whispered. “You haven’t received a new missive, report, or newspaper in six days.”

“That can’t be.” Aaron pressed a hand to the window. His deeper, faster breaths emphasized the humidity, how it felt like trying to breathe water. “It isn’t.”

“Aaron . . .”

“What does that mean?!” he boomed. “No! No more mind games! Leave me alone!” He fumbled for the closest object at hand, a thick New York law text, and hurled it straight at Alexander. ( _I strike him right between his ribs_ . . .) It ricocheted off him to thunk onto the floor, and Burr seethed. “You’re not real!” He hurled his inkwell; it struck him across the forehead, the square corner leaving a bloody mark and the ink spraying across the wall like ghastly black blood. Alexander bent double with hitching, painful breaths and red, real blood washing down his face over his mouth and nose. The next object, a brass paperweight heavy enough to crack a man’s skull, waited in Burr’s hand, but its shot never came. It thumped back onto the desk as Aaron rushed to Alexander’s side. This time, no one ushered him away.

“I think you . . .” Alexander bit back a sudden gasp of pain. “. . . cracked a rib.” Blood dripped off his nose like rainwater and it twisted Burr’s stomach.

“But how?” Aaron clutched at Alexander’s arm. “You’re not real, you’re not . . .”

Face twice as pale against pain and blood, Alexander smiled as an elder does to a naïve child who could not possibly know better. Burr’s grip turned hard and bruising. “You’re _not_ ,” Burr hissed.

“Aaron,” Alexander said as if he had not spoken. “It hurts to breathe. Can you help me?”

“I’m not a doctor. You’re not real and I’m not a doctor . . .”

Alexander moved a hand to his own side, sucked in a breath. “I don’t need a doctor. C’mon, Aaron, you can do it, c’mon.”

Unbidden, Burr imagined that torn smile of a minute ago. Alexander, slumped in his chair, leaning his head on his hand as if he was too heavy to support himself, a bit of his hair undone from its ribbon, the wall unmarked and the law book and inkwell sitting in their original places. He imagined it so clearly that believed he was in that moment again.

Then he blinked and he was still in that imagined moment.

Alexander’s smile widened into a pure, effervescent joy and he jumped to his feet. “Aaron Burr, you amazing human being! You did it! You—”

Unbidden, Burr imagined Weehawken. Alexander facing the rising sun, checking his gun over and over and gazing down the trigger with his glasses flashing in the first streaks of light like an arrogant challenge, mist hanging around like a frozen gasp, Van Ness and Pendleton and the doctor at the sidelines, Van Ness’s mouth shaping those ten essential numbers, the air cold and damp on a July day that would later turn blistering, and Burr looked down at his gun, aimed at poor, infuriating Alexander Hamilton’s heart. He imagined it so clearly that he believed he was in that moment again.

“Fire!” Van Ness yelled.

They whirled on each other, but this time Alexander did not aim at the sky. Sweating, expression cracked open with fear, he threw his gun to the ground and held his hands up in surrender.

Relief and happiness struck Aaron with such force his knees lost their strength and threatened to collapse him. Burr made to throw his gun to the ground and shout, “I’m satisfied!” and run to Alexander and say _I’msorrythiswasamistakeI’llneversleepagainifyoudieAlexanderI’msosorryI’msorry_. But as he threw his gun down, Burr’s finger ghosted over the trigger, and—

Alexander dropped with a shout of fear and surprise and betrayal ripped straight from his lungs.

Burr covered his eyes but the scene did not flicker away.

A hand touched his shoulder. “Don’t worry, boys, I’ll handle Burr. Please get Monsieur Hamilton across the Hudson.” Under his breath, the man continued, “As if you’ll be able to help him.”

To his shock when Burr lowered his hands, the man who had brushed off the others was a tall negro with scruff on his cheeks, a controlled cloud of curls, and the most nonchalant expression of disdain Burr had ever witnessed. The negro laughed, dry and unimpressed, at his stunned face. “Let’s get a drink, Burr.”


	3. Upside Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have I mentioned that everyone who reads, comments, or leaves kudos is an angel that gives me strength because that should be established since I'm leading you guys into an existential abyss.

Burr did not know how he came to be sitting across from a mysterious negro with more gall than most royalty. He did not remember walking there, or ordering the wine on the table. He did not remember the date or the time or the state he was in. He wasn’t convinced the negro was a real person or something sprung from his addled mind. But where everything blurred around him – perhaps his daughter was a dream – the negro, at least, remained distinct through sheer impossibility.

The man’s coat was a military cut but a dark purple unlike any during the Revolution, with golden buttons and golden epaulettes, but his shirtsleeves were expensive and laced like a civilian’s, and his waistcoat was Revolution blue. His accent was French but spoken harshly like a foreigner feigning the accent, drawing out his words instead of gliding through them as a native speaker would, his tongue forming every word perfectly but with the impression he was forcing out every syllable. Despite his skin color, his bearing implied power, a slave _owner_ instead of a slave. His shoulders were relaxed, and his arm swept through the air with easy gestures, an undeniable domination of his space. The man was a paradox and a marvel and Burr could not make heads nor tails of him.

“Now, to cut to the chase, as they say,” the negro drawled, swirling his wine. “They usually call me one out of three things. I don’t really care what you call me; I have too many names to particularly enjoy one over the others.” His lips pressed together, as if waiting for Burr to undercut him, but Burr was too busy staring in dazed confusion to comment. Satisfied, the man continued, “My names include Thomas Jefferson, Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, _et_ Daveed Diggs. For you, it would probably be easiest to call me the last one.”

When Burr failed to respond, Diggs (Lafayette? Jefferson?) rolled his eyes. “ _Dieu aide moi_ , they weren’t joking about how fragile you were. Burr, listen up, I am not here to fucking—” he gestured outwards, as if to convey meaning “—baby you through all your revelations. I have always disliked you intensely, but I am here to give you the low-down before you embarrass yourself anymore.”

If Burr could speak, he would. At the moment, he wasn’t sure he could breathe. Each breath felt as if it was filling up someone else’s lungs, and if he tried to move, nothing would happen. He was disconnected, seeing Jefferson or Diggs or whoever he thought he was but knowing there was nothing there – nothing nothing _nothing – Lord help me, my mind is gone. I rescind all of my sins, I beg for redemption, please Lord_ –

“Burr!”

Aaron startled in fright and knocked his wine glass off the table. It shattered, but did it make a sound? Did he hear it?

“Look at me.”

Burr looked.

The man sighed, put-upon, and pointed at himself. “What’s my name?”

“You’re not Thomas Jefferson. Or Lafayette. That’s absurd,” Burr accused, on the verge of shouting.

“ _Voilà_! Progress.” The man leaned back, his smile easy and infuriating. “It _is_ absurd, I’ll give you that, but less so to me. When I come from, people have given up on distinctions, and the historians have forgotten how, when, or why the lines blur together. No one understands and no one cares. Except for Miranda, but that little—” He shut down, his smile pulling and twisting into several grimaces until he rubbed a rough hand over his face. He tried again with discomfort, as if a misstep away from an electric shock. “Miranda’s never known when to stop. It is admirable and infuriating.”

“Who is Miranda?” Concrete questions. Ignore the forgetful historians and ignore the stitch of unease in the man’s brow. Concrete. Useful.

“He’s a piece of work,” he scoffed, with reluctant warmth. “Knowing him, you’ve met, _oui_? They call him Lin-Manuel Miranda and Alexander Hamilton. Ah, you have met him, I can see it in your face. A little like standing in front of a firing squad, isn’t it? Hah, yeah.”

“He . . .” Burr took a fortifying drink of his wine and pushed down his thoughts. (Where had the wine come from? He saw its scattered remains on the floor.) “He rhymed, and you’re from the same . . . place as him. Why don’t you?”

The man leaned forward and grinned. “Man, if I rapped you’d be knocked flat on your back, jaw slack and thinking you might’ve been slapped.” The words flowed fast and liquid, with that same poetic lilt that Miranda had. “But usually I refrain, too much unnecessary strain on the little brains of the newbies stressing about if this is a game. It is. But for all your pain, there is no gain, so go ahead, do me a favor and don’t complain.”

After a long moment: “Okay.”

The man who was Lafayette and Jefferson and someone named Daveed Diggs slapped the table and laughed, loud and unashamed. “Christ, Burr, you’re such a tool.”

“Daveed!”

That voice was far too familiar.

The man sighed. “Oh, great.”

A woman and two men walked up to their table. For the first time, Burr noticed his surroundings: a small, warm, lavish room, decorated with an eclectic and eccentric flair, with no windows or doors. Burr’s first glass was still shattered on the dark hardwood floor. The woman and the two men greeted with their cheerful pleasantries, the stitch returned to Diggs’ brow, and no one commented that the woman had the same new and odd bone structure that Miranda had, or that Marquis de Lafayette stood next to someone also claiming his name or that Alexander Hamilton ( _Alexander Hamilton?_ ) wore a confusing outfit of a form-fitting shirt, a waist-length coat made of leather, and ankle-length pants made of a material that reminded Burr of blue burlap. And no one commented that they had not entered the room through a door or window, as there were none.

“Monsieur Diggs!” Lafayette clapped the man on the back and did not acknowledge Burr at the table.

“Monsieur Lafayette, Madame Soo,” Diggs returned warmly, similarly attempting not to acknowledge Hamilton.

“Daveed,” the woman sang, that same damnable lilt now a tune. “What are you doing to this poor man? It looks like you’re wearing down his lifespan.”

“Hey, Burr.” Hamilton beamed, so bright and honest, a sun’s blaze in a murky night, overjoyed as he had been not thirty minutes ago. (But perhaps it had been years.)

Burr wanted to cry with such sharp immediacy that without a single tear pricking his eye he felt out of breath and exhausted, as if he had sobbed for the last several hours. “Are you all right, Alexander?” he thought out loud. If he tilted his head a certain angle, he could see the bullet wound and the spreading blood stain.

Alexander’s light dimmed in concern, and he laid a hand on Aaron’s shoulder. Before he could speak, Lafayette crowed, “Selfish to the ends of the Earth! You shoot a man and you never for a moment remember those he leaves behind.” The woman set a light hand on his arm, and when Lafayette looked at her beseechingly, her expression hardened and her grip tightened. “Fine! _S’il vous plaît_ , continue.”

“Lay off, Laf, he’s new,” Diggs said, though a hint of a smile remained from Lafayette’s brief condemnation. “I found him at Weehawken trying to change history.”

“Did you even tell him about the loops yet?” Alexander demanded, the sun again, now fiery. Hundreds of thousands of miles away.

“Alexander . . .” the woman sang. Reproachful.

Burr closed his eyes.

Noise buzzed in his ears. A weight pressed down on him.

He drifted.

He sleepwalked in his own mind.

Music hummed through the walls, a sweet, soft melody. The corridor snaked left and right and widened into ballrooms and narrowed into alleyways. No windows. Some of the doors were locked and some were not. Inside one door was a grand hall full of bloody soldiers celebrating with one toting King George’s head on a pike. It continued to smile and laugh. Someone shouted, “Congrats to you, lieutenant colonel!” to him and draped a necklace of teeth and bone around his neck. Inside another door was a vortex of ink-stained parchment. A quill shot past his face and cut his cheek. Inside another, a pack of wolves trapped inside a filling hourglass. Another, a mechanical man and woman dancing on their tracks, apart and together and apart and together. Another, a glass case containing a pistol that shot its wielder. The corridor filled with filthy ankle-deep water. The corridor fell to decay and rats chattered rumors. The corridor curled in circles. The walls repeated. He passed the same unchanging portrait of a man entitled _The Treasury_. He baked in heat. He drowned in water. He froze in ice. He shook through malaria. He moved in night blindness and snow blindness. Inside another door was an older woman with a child on her lap sitting on a mountainous black pulsing mass that wheezed and wrapped itself around her stomach. The woman and child waved. Another, a crowd of men sat a table, sipped tea, and mocked George Washington as he pushed a giant cannonball engraved with the Declaration up a mountain, only for it roll down the other side. The corridor was covered in hasty, cramped scrawl that crawled down the walls and tripped him and bit at his heels. A ladder unfurled from the ceiling that led to the sound of gunshots and laughter. A trapdoor opened up in the floor that led to a warped, booming voice commanding _LET GOD SEE YOUR FACE LET HELL’S FIRE WASH YOUR BLOOD OF SIN._ He opened another door. Inside was a man in a strange outfit running towards him. The man clasped his arm. “Aaron, thank God!”

“Thank You, God,” he said obediently.

The man did not hear him. “I thought you were gone! How did you fall through the layers that fast? A few more minutes and you could’ve—” He couldn’t listen anymore. He followed as the man pulled him into the room and then into another room with a window and then out into a sun-filled meadow. The man turned and watched him. The man’s mouth moved but he did not hear the words.

He closed his eyes.

A blow, a slap so powerful it lit his cheek on fire like a hard punch, and he stumbled back.

“Aaron!”

Aaron blinked.

Alexander Hamilton stood like a barricade, shoulders squared as if he was six feet tall.

“Alexander,” Burr said tonelessly. He wanted to sink but the pain in his cheek kept him rooted. The tall grass of the meadow swayed at mid-thigh where he and Hamilton hadn’t trampled it down.

“A few things,” Hamilton said. He spoke as if in the middle of a thought or another conversation, without a lead-in, or as if his words carried a double meaning Burr was not privy to. “If you ever feel like that again, tell me. You could die, or come close to it. It isn’t pretty. The fundamental truth you need to work on now is that reality is nothing like you thought it was. Your life up to this point has been a façade, a backdrop for what’s real. I would say I’m sorry, but it’s _exhilarating_.” The words were abrupt, thrown out as if they were beyond question. Alexander grinned, that unstoppable hungry curiosity in his eyes that made him appear nineteen again. “Oh, and this is Virginia. I hate the people who inhabit this state but it _is_ beautiful, don’t you think?”

Burr waited to float away, for his head to cloud, for his vision to swim. He waited and waited and waited, but when he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, he saw the meadow and the old, gnarled trees of the forest around them and the wildflowers blooming in the sunlight, and he was present.

“It is,” he agreed with a small smile.


	4. Look Around

Alexander talked.

“A society’s mind is simple. At such a large scale, nuance fades, inconsistencies smooth, and the many voices harmonize into one chant. Revolutions become bloody because societies are a mob, no matter how clever the conductors. A society’s mind is blunt. But an individual’s mind? An individual’s mind is entirely nuance and a volatile nuance at that. Opinions shift with every oblique reference to them, so that after any conversation one is rearranging their thoughts in a minutely different way. If someone attempted to measure an opinion’s exact specifications, it would change in the process. An individual’s mind is an obfuscation. That’s why individuals form societies, why individuals _need_ societies. Without the guiding hand of a prevailing ideology, we lose identity, ethics, and motivation for progress. Society serves as the first philosophical opponent in an individual’s life that fuels questioning without posing the question, a natural generator of thought, whereas an individual without society never questions, or discards the endeavor as a lost cause.”

“What of the benefits of solitude?” Burr gestured to the wilderness around them with his free hand, the thick trees and the untamed Blue Ridge Mountains fading into the horizon between the interwoven branches. They had walked for hours hand-in-hand, Hamilton talking and rambling and listing and humming, sometimes acknowledging his audience but mostly speaking to the Earth itself, and Burr interjecting inquiries once every other hour.

“Taken in intelligent doses by the principled, yes, it can be cleansing, but . . .” Alexander talked. The conversation swayed between the highest abstractions to the most basic immediacy, absent of the quotations of scholars or the mention of legislature or any proper noun at all beyond “Aaron Burr” and “Alexander Hamilton.” If not for the mountains, Burr would have forgotten they were in Virginia.

The scenery repeated with peaceful regularity, the rising of a valley, the breeze across a meadow, the variety of wildflowes, the downward slope of a ravine, the jagged edge of a cliff, the scarred barks of the trees that swept through pines and oaks and maples impressive in their growth, all stretching past the circumference of his arms. Hamilton and Burr followed no path, the underbrush well established and unkindly, but in their curving, swaying steps the forest opened up and guided them through with the passive friendliness of Mother Nature on a sunny day; they rose and fell over hills and progressed no nearer to the mountains, who in their greatness implied an illusory closeness, and the sunlight painted them dark and light, dark and light, in exquisite intricacy that dappled across Burr’s face or radiated Hamilton’s strange leather jacket or set them both in a warm shade; loveliness surrounded, abounded, astounded, and passed to be placed with another type of the same, this repeating luxury that remained as it changed.

“Where are we going?” Burr asked.

“Forward,” Hamilton replied.

“Is Theo all right?” The question appeared, unsummoned, from beneath the present pleasant calm.

“Theodosia’s all right.”

“My daughter.”

“They’re both all right.”

Burr stopped, his hand a vise on Alexander’s, but Alexander pulled them into motion again, less with a physical tug and more with his loose-limbed confidence. “Hey, I’m all right, aren’t I?” he said. “They’re all right. Your grandson, too.” His smile grew bolder. “And your parents. Your sister. My mother. My son. They’re all fine, Aaron.”

“What does that mean?” he whispered. The hope drifting fragile in the air with the sunlight struck him breathless. It snapped a bone somewhere in his body, and the child he never truly was surfaced with a gasp of _wonder_.

“It means no more regrets from a past that doesn’t exist anymore. Make new ones.” Hamilton squeezed his hand tight. “Are you tired yet?”

Yes. He was a forty-eight year old urban politician, not a young soldier marching from sun up to sun down, and his feet hurt and his legs were sore and his back ached like it was slowly being compressed into a powder. But who cared? Alexander Hamilton held his hand and sunlight streaked down to warm and burn them and everyone he loved wasn’t – after every year of his life had been carved out with death, grief, and missed chances, he wasn’t – “No, I’m fine,” Burr said. Sore muscles could not beleaguer a soaring soul.

Alexander pointed through a gap in the trees to a large hill nestled between two towering siblings hundreds of feet away. “I’ll race you to the top.”

“A race? Washington always persuaded people to appoint you; you’ve never won a race single-handedly in your whole life.”

“Not true!” But Alexander shoved Aaron off-balance – cheater! – and they dashed off, each grabbing at the other’s clothes to slow his opponent down, stepping on his heels – “My shoe!” – shouting and whooping and cursing with every inch gained or lost, neither winning. The greenery thwacked them, the underbrush tore at their pants, the rocks bit at Aaron’s thin dress shoes and Alexander’s socked foot, and while they ran and fought they had to dodge through this natural maze with the inelegance of adrenaline that beat through their veins with its war drum staccato. Worse: the hill. The redoubled pistoning of their legs, strained to retain the previous speed, knocked the breaths out of their chests and sent their arms flailing as if they could fan more fuel into their bodies and still they laughed, gasping and grinning without stop. Alexander tried leaping over a fallen log and felled himself, and Aaron tripped over one then the other and joined them on the ground as a third casualty. “Ha!” Alexander scrambled to his hands and knees, his legs shaking fragile with excitement, and shoved a handful of leaf litter in Aaron’s face – he kicked Alexander in the calf – falling, twisting – friendly, vicious punches – “theres dirt in my mouth agh youre disgusting!” “go to hell!” “ow my nose!” “my shirt!” “dont strangle me!” “i win i win!” “yeah right!” – until they screamed their voices past hoarseness and beat their muscles past exhaustion and they panted on their backs, staring at the endless clear blue sky above them, a bowl of blue milk, a stretch of blue silk, a heaven more wondrous than the night stars for its plain bright beauty relatable to childhood blankets and local ponds. They giggled a bit at the world, their existence. Life! A punchline to a cynic and an absurd favorite fairytale to a child, which they were – children, little boys – in those moments. Transported back in time.

“Tell me everything,” Aaron whispered loudly. Secrets must be whispered but he had to speak over the blood roaring in his ears.

Alexander nodded, rustling the dirt and dead leaves underneath him. He rolled on his side; Aaron mirrored him. He took Aaron’s hand again, laid on the ground between them, and whispered.

“No one talks about it. The meaning of it all, I mean, the implications. There are – it’s –” He looked at their hands. “I’m not the Alexander Hamilton you knew. In the literal sense. There are hundreds of Alexander Hamiltons, and hundreds of Aaron Burrs, and hundreds of Schuyler sisters, and Thomas Jeffersons, James Madisons, George Washingtons . . . Each with their own world that differs from the others. Loops. Some Hamiltons were born in 1757, some in 1755. Some Jeffersons are arrogant, some are meek. Some Peggy Schuylers married Stephen Van Rensselaer, some don’t exist at all. Hamiltons usually have eight children, but I only had four.”

“You had eight.”

“Your Alexander Hamilton did,” he corrected. His thumb stroked across Burr’s, a taut but familiar motion. “My Aaron Burr ran away from his uncle more times than he could count. In the dark, once, he told me he didn’t believe in God. ‘And if there is no God, why does ideology matter?’ he told me. He hated the cold and the heat; no climate suited him. I know you aren’t him.”

(But he said this quietly with his eyes on their clasped hands. He said this with hints of a tremor. He said this with the air of the grieving who have not accepted the loss yet.)

“Where is he?”

“Somewhere. We haven’t talked since he shot me.”

 _I shot you_ , Burr thought. Except he hadn’t. But he had. How much change was necessary before he could forsake the blame?

“We broke the loop at the same time, when the bullet hit me. It hurt, but somehow I knew I wouldn’t die. There were cracks in the sky. I threw my gun down, I said, ‘Aaron, it’s all right, I’m satisfied!’ He shot me again. He didn’t have to reload the gun. He shot me again. My shoulder, then my neck. I fell down, and when I looked up again, he was gone.”

Aaron squeezed Alexander’s hand, and in one rush of motion Alexander melted into Aaron’s space, his face buried in Aaron’s shoulder, his arm around Aaron’s body, and their hands together, pressed between their heartbeats.

“Thank you,” Alexander mumbled.

Aaron blinked up at the sky. He was warm. “Is it endless?” Aaron murmured into Alexander’s hair. “Timeless?”

“I can never leave it behind.” So quiet. The sound travelled to Aaron’s ear through his shirt, trailing up his skin as a touch, and it wrenched that realization from him that he had fought for weeks:

 _This is real_.

They fell asleep.

~~~~~

The sun shined the same when they awoke, and they were still transported back in a time when nothing mattered but themselves and the questions were in the most impressive abundance.

“What are your children’s names?”

“Philip, Alexander, Jr., James Alexander, and John Church. Were you born in Newark?”

“Yes. Were you born in ’55 or ’57?”

“’55. St. Croix, not Nevis. My father never responded to my letters. Did you see General Montogomery get shot?”

“No. Did you write fifty-one essays for the Federalist Papers?”

“Fifty. Madison wrote thirty. Did your wife have five children from her marriage with Prevost?”

“No. The only child she ever had was Theodosia. She was a miracle. Were you rejected by the College of New Jersey?”

And so on, on and on.

And sometimes Alexander talked.

“The thought of man is under constant repair, and as we reimagine ourselves, we lose ourselves . . .”

And sometimes Aaron interjected.

“Is memory so stable?”

And they walked.

Children walked through a forest bigger than themselves, bigger than they or anyone would ever be. A place perfect for losing oneself and then finding oneself through the losing.

Time passes, and the sun does not move.

“Is that how the world is now?” Aaron asked, pointing at the frozen sun.

“If you want it to be,” Alexander replied.

The world was a sandbox now, Aaron realized. If he could go back in time to the duel, if he could stop time, if he could go anywhere . . .

“Can we go anywhere?”

“Anywhere.”

. . . then the world could be molded, it could be perfected. Paradise found. Is that what it felt to be a child, this unbridled passion and joy and imagination unfettered unencumbered untethered unweighted unopposed and the confidence to _do_? Aaron had never been gripped by such an unerring faithfulness even during the most moving sermon.

“You’re smiling,” Alexander said, smiling.

“So are you.” Beaming was a better descriptor for the two of them.

Alexander leaned forward. The moment happened without time passing. Not in the literal way that the sun did not move in the sky, but the faulty way of the human perception. Alexander leaned forward and kissed Aaron on the mouth, irresistible in his energy, and pulled back, and to Aaron it happened in a split second of blurred time while the moments before and after stretched into distorted minutes where the sound didn’t fall on the ear quite right.

Alexander crumbled, that hidden grief rising to the fore, and time sped up to its usual pace. “Oh God, I’m so sorry,” Alexander spluttered, panicked and regretful tears in his eyes. “Aaron, forgive me, plea—”

Joy whirlwinded in Aaron’s chest from the new salvation of the world, and it felt right to erase the pain in Alexander’s face – everywhere in his body – because he could, and he wanted to, and maybe he had always wanted to (the man in the corner, “his” Alexander, had bled, and he had wanted to take it away even as he had caused it) and if this wrong was so easy to right, then the world would be perfect within a day’s work, a _day_ . . .

Aaron kissed Alexander, and a quiet sob escaped Alexander’s mouth as he melted forward again, the sun, always the sun, and wrapped himself around Aaron. They kissed and eventually floated down to the grass, and the sun finally set into the intimacy of darkness. They kissed without seeing.

“I love you,” one of them whispered. Maybe they said it at the same time.

They slept, tangled together.

~~~~~

The sun was rising when Aaron woke. Fuzzy with contentment and sleep, he registered Alexander’s absence and cast his gaze around without concern. When he did not see him, alarm spiked sharp like the point of a needle. “Alexander!” he shouted as he jumped to his feet. “Alexander!”

“Hey!” Burr whirled around. Alexander stood smiling apologetically in a proper suit, his exotic outfit exchanged for a green jacket, waistcoat, and breeches. “You were asleep, so I went to change into something more appropriate. I’m sorry I gave you a scare.” Aaron relaxed into a smile, and Alexander strode forward with his warm, enthusiastic energy and kissed him, sweet with a bite, his hand lingering on Aaron’s arm. “Where do you want to go?”

That childlike fervor gripped Aaron again, oiled his limbs in preparation for movement. “You said we could go anywhere.”

Alexander grinned. “I did. Any time, any place.”

Any time! Any place! The words sang in Aaron’s head.

“Bring me back to Weehawken. I’ll save you first.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All is not as easy as it seems, however.


End file.
